Re: howto ignore rfkill switch

[Marcel Holtmann <marcel holtmann org>]

Hi Cedric,

>         On Thu, 2009-07-23 at 10:16 -0500, Carl Karsten wrote:
>         > Sounds like it would be good to just disable the switch,
>         right?  From
>         > what I gather, the switch signals the OS, which then runs
>         code to
>         > disable the wifi hardware, so overriding that is very
>         possible.
>         
>         
>         Depends on the machine. On some machines the switch just sends
>         a signal
>         to software; on others it physically turns off the wireless.
>         In the
>         latter case (including my laptop), there's nothing you can do,
>         since
>         it's all in hardware...
>         
>         Simon.
>         
> 
> Well, actually in the case of the OP, the switch has nothing to do
> with the PCMCIA card, and the card is still on, available and
> configurable by hand (iwconfig, ifconfig) when the switch is off. It
> is just NM that decides to disable all wireless possibility even if
> the switch concerns only the internal card.
> 
> A partial solution was found by using connman (from intel AFAIK) which
> seems to ignore the switch completely. 

this has nothing to do with ConnMan or alike. The RFKILL subsystem
before 2.6.31 is utterly broken. The only thing that ConnMan does
differently is that it matches the RFKILL switch to the actual WiFi
hardware and don't apply it to all WiFi devices. However before a 2.6.31
kernel that works so so.

The 2.6.31 kernel gives you a proper concept of block/unblock one
specific device. Or block/unblock all WiFi devices for example. This is
heavily needed since there was a mis-assumption that a WiFi switch
should block all devices. That is just wrong. It is an userspace policy
what should happen.

Regards

Marcel